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The Behind the Scenes Story   Jessica Reagan Salzman Jessica Reagan Salzman is the founder of Behind the Scenes LLC. She has extensive bookkeeping, accounting, management, and administration experience and founded Behind the Scenes out of her passionate drive to assist small business owners as they traverse along the path to creating a successful business. For more than a decade, Ms. Reagan Salzman has managed the financial aspects of a variety of small businesses, including assisting businesses with start-up procedures. Ms. Reagan Salzman is designated a Professional Bookkeeper as a graduate of Universal Accounting Center which exclusively focuses on training bookkeepers and accountants in small business accounting, which is very different from the bookkeeping and accounting process of larger organizations. She is also a member of the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers (AIPB), the National Society of Accountants (NSA), and she is a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor. Ms. Reagan Salzman has also been called "the marriage saver" because of the assistance she has provided to husband/wife owned companies and the amazing difference it has made in the lives of those couples. Jessica lives in Norwood, Massachusetts with her husband Michael, their two daughters, and their dog and she operates Behind the Scenes from her home office. When asked about working-from-home, Jessica has been known to say, "Most days, I wouldn't have it any other way!" If you run a home-based business, I'm sure you can relate to that sentiment. Jessica's Story Behind the Story So who am I? What's the story behind the story? As far back as I can recall, two prominent things have always been true about me. I ask a lot of questions and I am passionate about helping people. So what do those two things have to do with one another and, more importantly, why are those two things relevant on an "about me" page when you're here to learn more about my business? Those two traits are responsible for guiding me down the path that led me to doing what I do. Since you're considering working with me, I thought you might be interested in the Behind the Scenes story. Thinking back to even my very first job, what stands out in my mind is how I always needed to find a way to bring meaning to the work I was doing. Even when I was a teenager, working in a drug store, it wasn't about just ringing up the purchases, it was about pointing out the items that were on sale, the ones that could save the customers money. It was about helping someone find what they needed in the first aid aisle. It was about making sure someone's precious photographs were developed the way they wanted them so they could present their loved one with the perfect gift. It was about helping someone get the prescription they needed, even if there was a blizzard raging outside and we needed to close the story early. It was about finding a way to stop pouring soon-to-expire baby formula down the drain, and instead get it into the hands of young, single mothers who were living in a women's shelter a few towns over. Quite a few jobs filled the span of time between my very first job (which I found as soon as I was old enough to have a work permit with parental authorization) and my current line of work, which is running Behind the Scenes, a bookkeeping service that focuses on helping entrepreneurs turn their bookkeeping problems into profits. But the one job that probably had the most impact on me, the one that led to the decision to go out on my own and do what I had been doing for my employers for over 10 years, that was the job I had in December of 2005. I had just been hired as the full-charge bookkeeper at a local CPA firm. I was going to be assisting small business owners with their bookkeeping and tax preparation needs. My first day on the job, I started asking questions - as I'm known to do (just ask anyone who knows me and I have no doubt they'll laugh, agree, and tell you, "Yes, Jess - she does ask a lot of questions!"). So, it's my first day and I posed what in my mind was a very logical question. I asked for the login info for the firm's QuickBooks file. The answer I received - it stunned me. "We don't have one right now." Yes - you've read that right. A CPA firm without a bookkeeping system. I wasn't sure what to make of that, so I moved on to my next question. "What should I be working on?" I was led to a room that was filled with boxes, boxes stacked up very high in towering stacks all around the perimeter of the room. "Pick one!" Turned out those were all the projects that clients were waiting on, projects that had fallen behind, projects that were neglected and ignored. So I picked one. And within an hour I had discovered that the project that was 'almost done' and had been passed along to the client, accompanied by a sizeable bill - it was wrong. I don't mean there was a minor mistake. I don't mean there was something left out. The tax forms I was reviewing as I familiarized myself with the work I was to do for this client? They were wrong to the tune of more than $40,000 in overstated taxable payroll wages. You better believe I had quite a few additional questions that I asked after that. After fixing those mistakes and informing the client of the mistakes and my resolution of the mistakes, I made a big decision. I knew in my heart that I could do better than what I had just witnessed. I knew that my combination of an inquisitive mind and a helpful heart would lead me down a path that seemed rarely traversed in the bookkeeping industry, at least the one I'd been exposed to locally, time and time again. You see, it wasn't the first time I'd come across a mistake made by the bookkeeper before me. So I decided to self-educate (which is another one of my prominent traits - my love of self-learning, self-study, and reading). I signed up for a self-study course that would lead to the official designation of Professional Bookkeeper and in February 2006, I officially opened Behind the Scenes LLC. Behind the Scenes is my answer to the small business owner's need for a powerful, dependable, accurate, and automated bookkeeping system that they can trust and rely upon as they work within their business, striving to make it the very best business that it can be. I truly believe that one of the reasons I have been as successful as I have been is because of the caring that is behind the work I do. For me it's not just about making money (although that's nice and a necessity). It's really about the struggle of the small business owner to find a solution to their bookkeeping challenges and a way to make their businesses run better. And today, the real magic of what I do is that not only do I get to help my clients, directly, I also get to help their clients, indirectly. So when I'm helping you in your business, I also take pride in knowing that I'm also helping those that you are helping. It's neat to know that the work I do to help you make your business better helps all of those who also need what your business has to offer them. I'm passionate about bookkeeping and leveraging it as a tool to help transform people's lives and businesses. I really love what I do. I've been told, "Wow, I've never met a bookkeeper like you before!" I think that's in large part due to the fact that, for me, it's about the art of numbers and the science, not just the science. I believe that bookkeeping is a hidden business success secret in the small business world. You'd never find a big company trying to operate and make decisions without an accounting system. So I get excited when I think about how helpful I'm able to be when working with a small business owner who just needs this missing link to turn his or her business into the best possible version of their dream business. So yes - I'm passionate about bookkeeping and I want to share my passion with you. I want to share my system with you so you can transform your business too! This, to me, is having a profession with true meaning. And I get to ask a lot of questions doing what I do! It's truly a perfect combination for someone who loves to ask, ask, and ask some more and who always wants to lend a helping hand. So to conclude my story, I ask my next question - "How can I help YOU?"